


Scenes of Gabriel Reyes' Numerous Encounters with Death

by ravenously



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Death as a Narrator, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8473294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenously/pseuds/ravenously
Summary: Death inexplicably follows Gabriel Reyes through the course of his life through various near-death encounters; each scene is studded with one more small piece in the ever growing puzzle that the man turns out to be.





	

The first time I saw Gabriel Reyes, I was a bystander. It was a very rare thing, you see, for me not to be called to a soul and to immediately cradle them, usher them through the other side. 

No. The first time I saw Gabriel Reyes, I stood behind the offender. The barrel of a gun was wedged firmly into the soft flesh of his forehead, and the curly black hairs that bounced away from the action seemed to scream for help. 

His soul was proud, blooming from his chest like a branching jacaranda. A rare kind of soul, with the Potential and possibility that only a few lucky men are privileged to enjoy.

It was always sad, seeing a child die. No matter how natural, how inevitable, the second saddest moment of my job was to clutch at a child’s soul and watch the rivers of Potential dry and shrivel up, golden light falling away until it was empty. 

I saw the flash of the boy’s eyes, terrified and tired beyond their years. Heard the click of the revolver. Saw the tense of a knuckle in the attacking man’s hand. Smelled the incoming stench of death and longing.

My hand reached towards the boy as the bullet sang, and both of us clutched at empty air. 

It happened sometimes; I misjudged, or didn’t watch long enough. I prefer to be wrong than to have to pick a soul up from the ground who’s lost and hurt, past its time. 

The boy dropped down and kicked outwards, and a natural snarl seemed to etch itself into his lips. 

I faded from view as I heard the crack of the butt of a gun hitting the skull of a man, heard a joyous shout, jaw a soul shy away from me in victorious dance.

\-----

The second time I saw him, he was a man. 

I wasn’t there for him. 

My hand gripped the slowly bleeding shoulder of a young man- a boy, really- and I sat on the floor with him. His soul slowly fell upon my lap as the seconds passed. 

I wasn’t there for Gabriel Reyes, but he was the man standing above my charge, his jaw set and determined, his eyes far away, distanced by necessity. 

Within the boy’s soul, two streams of possibility opened up. The wider of the two, the more likely, was short and cut off with a resounding finality. The other spread on for eons, with many more stream opening themselves up in the far distance. 

I pressed my hand more firmly to the bleeding shoulder, trying to numb it, in whatever way my incorporeal being could. 

The boy didn’t know I was there. 

He spit, a thick red gob and slurred, “Kill me, cabrón.” The wide stream grew into a river. “Don’ be cruel about it.”

Gabriel Reyes was bleeding and holding himself in a way that showed me he wasn’t used to getting hit. Not that he didn’t get into trouble, but that he didn’t get hit. My gaze followed the fallen boy’s outstretched hand and saw an embroidered six-shooter, kicked away. One bullet left. Still smelling faintly of gunpowder, blood, and death. 

“You’re a good shot, kid.” His voice was a deep growl, and even as I saw the unrelenting, unforgiving stare that he cast upon the boy, I saw the jacaranda tree of a soul bloom outwards, just a little. I could only see it because he, too, was edging closer to my veil of reality. 

He slowly crouched onto one knee, and shook his head. Just once. “You don’t need to die, tonto. This is your choice.” Slowly, he extended a hand, putting his gun back into its holster. 

The boy’s hesitation was obvious, but if he didn’t take the hand, he would bleed out on me. I caressed his soul in the method of pushing him, hoping he would listen, hoping I wouldn’t have to take his soul today.

The boy took his hand. Gabriel Reyes’ other palm clasped tight against the shoulder I had held just moments ago, and then I faded away. 

\------

The third time I saw him, he was the color red. Not to be confused with a slate, basic red; no. He was every shade of red possible, and when he opened his mouth, his tongue spoke little red lies and white, hissing curses that rang through the air. 

The surrounding chaos and burning faded to the background; it wouldn’t touch either of us in this moment, this precious moment that spanned an eon. There might have been crying in the distance. There was more death slowly leaking it’s way to the corners of my mind, and if I concentrated, I could hear their gasps and pleas, their prayers and curses.

Gabriel Reyes spoke to me, and I couldn’t help but listen. Of course, he wasn’t really speaking; I held him in my arms and from his mouth came garbled viscera and gore. His lungs were punctured; any remaining air was used to wheeze horrendously in a half-cough. The sign of a dead man. I wiped blood from his lips, and paid attention to his still-bright soul, and it said to me;

“Save the others.”

A righteous man burning in his biggest moment of need, soul fading when the world needs it the most. 

(This was, in fact, the saddest moment of my job; an unsung hero building a damn to prevent him from ever reaching the Rivers of Potential.)

His eyes burned with a life that betrayed his position, narrowed and knowing. He gargled out small half-curses, small prayers and hopes, small refrains of Spanish spraying out of his dying lips in brilliant shades of deep, vital red.

I laid his soul back on the ground, and did what I could to lessen the blows of this earth on his compatriots.

Somehow, his soul faded from my view, as I tended to the other dying.

\-------

The fourth time I saw him, he looks up towards the ceiling of an operating room. He saw nothing, but as I came closer, I saw his heaving chest skip a rhythm, his mangled lower jaw twitching in recognition. 

It must not have been much longer than a day. Maybe less, since the last time I saw him. He looked blue, more than red, breathing regulated only by struggling machines. I saw the set of determination and acceptance on his face, the exhaustion of a man who knows he has lost.

The woman in white did more harm than good as the soul who was Gabriel Reyes turned its translucent eyes on me and said; 

“Mátame.”

His body screamed, but his soul was calm in my hands, fraying at the edges. There was nothing I could do; despite the popular perception, I have no scythe and I reap no souls. I merely comfort them through their passage. 

Instead of death, his soul was slowly being lost to me. Rather than dissipating into a second life, into a void, into a liminal plane, it merely faded away as the witch in white operated, her frenzied face screaming of life and movement. 

I lost Gabriel Reyes’ soul and when it disappeared, I was called away from the room with no death.

\------

There is no way to count every other time I have seen his soul. Likewise, there is no way to quantify that the soul I see is the soul of Gabriel Reyes. 

That soul no longer exists, and yet in the burning movements of the black cloud of hot, fetid being, I have seen glimpses of a smirk, of a strong set of determined eyes. A flash of purple, flowering branches that shake and shiver more like lightning than a tree now. 

In the fading moments of dozens of souls, I have seen the red pulsing pleasure in the shifting nebula that was once Gabriel Reyes. 

And in every instance, I have been unable to bring my souls safely through their passage. In every instance, the black, shifting carnivorous monstrosity has fixed me with a red glare, hissed, “Gracias, Señor Muerte,” and then taken the souls from my grasp. 

In every instance that I have seen the man who was Gabriel Reyes, he has devoured the fading eternal life of my charges, given me a wink and a smile, and disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me over at [Tumblr ](http://buckycurtis.tumblr.com)
> 
> Thanks to [Bachmanofficial](http://bachmanofficial.tumblr.com) for giving me this delectable crunch of an idea.


End file.
